Friday, July 13, 2012

How Mia Can Win: Don't Let Matheson Define Her

On April 22nd I posted a blog summarizing this year’s convention. In it I expressed concern that Mia Love would be subjected to the same sorts of slander that her predecessors have been. I stated that she needed to get out in front of the silliness and attack the idea of “right wing extremism,” an ill-defined term that the newspapers have been using to scare people into voting as close to Democrat as their conscious will allow. It’s a term the party needs to deal with because it is, as a point of fact, the primary weapon of the Democrats, and a great method of distraction. After all, why pay attention to the spending and the loss of liberty if we are flinging mud at each other?

To date the Party has failed to deal with this nonsense, and I had hoped Mia would if only for her own race having a chance at success. Simply put, it’s imperative that we stop the Democrats from defining us. So long as Democrats can define Republicans it won’t matter if the candidate is a moderate, conservative or libertarian we will all be “too extreme for Utah,” even though Democrats believe in abortion, gay marriage, and wealth redistribution, all values Utahns have rejected time and time again. The tragic reality is, however, most Utahns don’t know the newspapers, yes including Deseret News, have the same agenda here as they do anywhere else, to defeat Republicans, promote “social justice” and otherwise wreak havoc in the lives of the real working class (that is people who have jobs, not the professional protesters made infamous in Wisconsin.) Until the newspapers (especially the extreme and off the wall nutty City Weekly) are exposed for what they are, not Utah’s “Independent voice” as they claim, but Utah’s voice of the fringe radical left we will not be able to have an adult conversation about anything political, even within the party.

Mia’s trouble is that Matheson started pounding her with allegations of being extreme right out the gate. The newspapers analyze things like her budget proposal through the lenses of her being “cruel” rather than being pragmatic and realistic. Mia’s budget reveals her lack of sacred cows which is exactly what we need. America is in a serious fiscal crisis, and Matheson has done next to nothing to fix the situation. Matheson is likely to be content to “put Utah first” by allowing the craziness to continue. Mia represents another opportunity to replace a do-nothing congressman with a do-something congresswoman who isn’t afraid to say the hard things. Since she won’t say it, I will, she is not radical, she is not extreme. It is not extreme to take a look at our financial situation and say we need a change.

It is not extreme to be pro-second amendment. It is not extreme to be pro-life. It is not extreme to expect that laws will be followed with regard to immigration so that we have a fair and organized system of immigration that favors no one and discriminates against no one. It is not extreme to expect that our political class will live within their means as we are expected to live within ours, and a quick message to the Deseret News that hates to remind people they are owned (note within a note: Not managed by) by the LDS Church… The LDS Church promotes the total avoidance of debt except for transportation, shelter and education. So Fiscal responsibility is not extreme, nor is the idea of personal self-reliance (also a value promoted by the Church).

Yet somehow people who promote these ideas are labeled extreme and the Democrats get away with it because we have failed to define ourselves. Are we so afraid of debate that we are unwilling to stand up to the taunting and say, “no you’re wrong!”

Looking at the Dan Jones Polls (which I believe are worth a grain of salt) things are not looking good for Mia. While I do believe Dan Jones has about 30 points worth of bias (the threshold he famously predicted Morgan Philpot would lose by, and Morgan only lost by a little less than 5 points) if Mia does loose this race it is only because she has failed to disarm Matheson by getting out ahead of the name calling and taking on the myth of Right Wing Extremism head on, reaching out to people and saying:

“These are my values, and these values are shared by a large majority of Utahns. We have nothing to apologize for, our state has been among the best managed, and best states to live under Republican leadership. While our nation lags in the job market at about 8.2% the “extreme” (sarcasm air quotations would be good here) leadership of Utah has restored jobs, has kept taxes low and managed to make Utah just about the best place to live in the country. I think that is exactly the sort of leadership we need to send to Washington, not someone who protects the status quo as Matheson has done, but someone who thinks like you, someone whose values are like yours, someone who wants to see the kind of change in Washington that we have had in Utah, someone who will fight to turn things around in Washington as we have turned things around in Utah. That’s not extreme people, that is common sense.”

It is not too late for Mia to turn this around, but so long as Jim Matheson and his Democratic allies in the newrooms across Utah (with RNRS being a notable exception) Mia will be doomed to the fate of all of her predecessors.

About Me

I am a Libertarian leaning Conservative in the vein of Hans Herman Hoppe, and FA Hayek. I am the author of "The Great Compromise: Getting Past The Emotional Nonsense Dividing America." I am absolutely opposed to government growth and interference in free markets. However I am not fanatical about my beliefs and in fact try my best to approach politics with a "moderate tone." I like to write about religion, entertainment and politics and write material designed to encourage individualism, entrepreneurship and free market solutions to solve the problems our State and Federal governments keep creating.